


Bolt Like a Horse

by aggretsu



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:21:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24136537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggretsu/pseuds/aggretsu
Summary: Close friends never know how to break up. AU where they go to work, sorta.
Relationships: Lu Han/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Bolt Like a Horse

**Author's Note:**

> old fic from 2012

It was the kind of office that everyone stepped into red-eyed and smelly-breathed, because two alarm clocks had not been enough to wean them from their five-hour slumber, as least not without a fifteen minute session of whack-a-mole with the guilty instigators. Lu Han played this game every morning and then rolled in through the revolving doors in a wrinkly suit, one for every day of the week, piled on top of each other on the sofa-chair in his bachelor pad like the thin layers of a delicious green tea crepe cake. The passing of each day saw the suits migrate from the back of the sofa-chair to the headboard of the bed, as if through a flipbook, so that Monday’s would always rest on the bottom, Tuesday’s on top of it, etc., for as lazy Lu Han was, he was still a man of logic and practicality. In fact it was these two qualities that allowed him to settle into such a stupor of laziness. He had created endless shortcuts for himself in life that below-average efforts more than adequately covered most of his daily activities. He was the classmate who guessed half the answers right on his English exams, when you, fumbling at the spit-wetted page corners of an abridged Merriam-Webster, crammed for a week only to get a B-. "Oops," he'd say, holding up the test paper with a sticker of a goldfish wearing sunglasses. "How'd that happen?" You’d wept, thinking, _You little jerk you know exactly how that happened: You rigged the universe with that disarmingly handsome face of yours._ In your spare time you might've written him a love note or two, none of which you ever stuffed into your mouth and swallowed to conceal the evidence or anything. That is absolutely not the reason that to this day you still suffer from poor digestion.  
  
“You’re wearing Tuesday,” Sehun said, leaning his chin on the divider of Lu Han’s cube, close enough to smell his Colgate toothpaste. He was probably due for his morning cuppa, Lu Han guessed, judging by the size of those undereye circles. (No longer young enough to get away with pretending they were aegyo-sal, Sehun was the summer intern Kris could never bring himself to fire because of his excellent coffee-fetching skills. It was now winter. “His legs are so long it takes him a lot faster to get to Starbucks,” Zitao had explained in the break room once, because Zitao had a penchant for justifying everything Kris did, didn’t, or would do.  
  
“By that logic Kris should fetch us all coffee,” Yixing pointed out.  
  
“Well…” Zitao frowned. “Maybe he _will_ then.”  
  
“Oh…kay.”  
  
“ _Yeah_ ,” Zitao affirmed, with a note of triumph. From his corner office Kris had turned in his swivel chair to arch a well-groomed eyebrow in the direction of the conversation, as if he were allergic to the sound of Zitao’s voice.)  
  
“Yeah, Minseok hasn’t been around to do my laundry,” Lu Han explained. “All my suits are out of order now. It’s driving me nuts.”  
  
Sehun looked sympathetic. “You should’ve told me your maid was away. I could’ve helped you out. Monday’s the blue multistripe two-button, notch lapel, slim fit; Tuesday’s charcoal, center-vented, pleated slacks. Wednesday’s black stripe, pick stitching on the lapel and pockets, my favorite—”  
  
(“Also he says Sehun’s puppy crush on Lu Han is really cute. It motivates him to come to work and boss all you assholes around,” Zitao continued. “His words, not mine, of course. I would never call you guys assholes!”  
  
“Kris is an asshole,” Jongdae said in Korean. Only Lu Han heard him. They exchanged quick grins and reverted back to stoic expressions just as quickly, because Zitao had a sixth sense for people insulting Kris, no matter in what language. Jongdae worked by the watercooler and dealt with the Korean clients. He was rumored to frequently chuckle to himself as well as whistle in the men’s room. Lu Han wondered if it was to mask the sound of communal urination. Some people were awkward about that kind of thing.  
  
“He doesn’t have a crush on me,” Lu Han protested. “He’s like eighteen or something.”  
  
“That was nonlinear,” Yixing said gently, placing a hand over Lu Han’s.  
  
Lu Han had turned to Yixing, hurt. He’d hoped no one would notice.)  
  
“Thursday, black, iridescent check, flat-front slacks, and Friday, tan with a tic weave, side vents, the matching vest—c’mon, you could’ve just asked me.”  
  
“Can you text it to me?”  
  
Sehun grinned, showing his baby corn teeth. He reserved his most teeth-revealing genuine smiles for Lu Han.  
  
“Sure. I know I have it typed up somewhere anyway. Lemme just find it and email it to you.”  
  
Lu Han smiled back.  
  
This went on for some time, until Lu Han’s landline rang. He shrugged his shoulders apologetically at Sehun, who made a “no, it’s totally okay” face and slunk off to his desk in the storage closet.  
  
“Stop flirting with the child,” came Kris’ stern voice on the other end of the line.  
  
“I thought that you liked seeing us flirt,” Lu Han said, squeezing the phone between his ear and shoulder to free his hand for logging in to Gchat. “I thought this was the reason you even bother to come to work every day.”  
  
“Stop flirting with me.”  
  
“I’m not flir—“ Lu Han began, but Kris had already hung up.  
  
He squinted over the top of his cube at Kris in his far-off office. Through the glass wall Kris looked directly at him and mouthed, _Last word, bitch._  
  
  
***  
  
  
“Kris really is an asshole. What kind of a douchebag builds himself an office with bulletproof glass walls?” Lu Han said on his way to the watercooler. He filled up his paper cone and turned around, ready to share another inside joke with Jongdae.  
  
Jongdae had his earphones in. He was too busy watching something on Youku and sharing an inside joke with himself.  
  
  
***  
  
  
“LU HAN-HYUNG’S SUITS OF THE WEEK” arrived in his inbox right before his morning meeting, complete with photos pulled from Baidu and color-coded captions.  
  
“Great, thanks! :)” Lu Han wrote back.  
  
“No problem, hyung :)”  
  
“:)”  
  
“:)”  
  
  
***  
  
  
Kris wanted to talk business. Lu Han sat with his hands folded in his lap as Kris rummaged through his papers for the meeting agenda, and stared intently at the ink painting of a panda head hanging behind the boss. If he looked too hard the two dark rings of fur circling the eyes began to look like a pair of full breasts, but then what were the ears? Was the snout a belly button in disguise? Why did Kris hang this up so that it looked like it was resting directly above his own head? Was it so the illusion of having not one but two heads would somehow enhance his aura as a powerful figure of authority?  
  
“Ahem.” Yixing closed the door behind him quietly. “Sorry I’m late.”  
  
Lu Han moved down a seat to make room.  
  
“Oh, you warmed it up for me,” Yixing said, sitting down.  
  
“Anything for you, babe.”  
  
Kris pretended to be afflicted with a spontaneous case of selective hearing.  
  
Lu Han hadn’t known that Yixing was going to be part of the meeting. They hadn’t had much opportunity for interaction since Lu Han started working here, which was strange considering that they now saw each other every day as opposed to a couple times a year in that immediate-post-college phase. And that had in itself been stranger, considering how Lu Han’s serious college girlfriend of two years had dumped him because “you guys are fucking Siamese,” in the doorway of their dorm. That wasn’t the real reason they had to split up, of course; it never is. Lu Han-and-Yixing wasn’t the problem. Lu Han-and-her were the problem. Or maybe Lu Han was the problem. But she felt the need to hurl the accusation anyway—she deserved that much, didn’t she, after putting up with all those stupid traditions he-and-Yixing had, date nights suddenly intruded upon by an oblivious third party, even if the third party was kind of a looker (well, he definitely wasn’t looking at her)—okay, she just had to. She owed it to herself and the pride she had kept quelled for him. So she spat out the last “…mese” with as much vitriol as her 90-pound body could handle and left before the sting could settle into Lu Han’s eyes, pierce his fragile consciousness. And sting it did, pierce it would, as the memory of what ensued stayed vivid in Lu Han’s mind, haunting his dreams for the next half-decade:  
  
Yixing had been in the common room at the time, tossing caramelized popcorn kernels in his mouth while watching a David Tao concert DVD. Thursdays were movie night but the library was out of major blockbusters and neither of them had been in an arthouse-y mood. He closed his mouth when he saw Lu Han’s face, like he somehow knew, and made room for him in the loveseat. Lu Han had slumped back in the seat until his head touched the wall, his mind completely blank for the next several hours. Yixing kept one eye on David but most of his attention on Lu Han, as they sat through his greatest hits, Lu Han’s shoulder dented with the weight of Yixing’s arm.  
  
Kris coughed, interrupting the flashback.  
  
“Alright.”  
  
“So.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
Kris leaned forward and folded his gargantuan fingers over one another, crushing a pile of papers under his well-greased elbows. “As you both know, the economy is improving.”  
  
Lu Han nodded. “And the price of veggies is finally going down. I thought I was going to have to starve after that drought last year.”  
  
“Corn?” Yixing asked.  
  
“No,” Kris cut in abruptly. “I’m talking about SettleFree. The company. We settle debts, remember? But the economy is getting better, and fewer people are in debt…”  
  
“…and that is bad for us,” Yixing finished obediently.  
  
“Correct.”  
  
“Yikes.” Lu Han was running on autopilot after hearing the word “economy” twice in one conversation.  
  
“Are we getting a pay cut?” Yixing wanted to know.  
  
Kris raised his eyebrows, which meant he hadn’t entertained the thought until you brought up but now that you did he might perhaps just maybe pass it off as his own.  
  
“Only if we keep losing clients at the rate we’re going. But that’s why I’ve formulated a plan. And I need you two,” he gestured with his colossal hands, “to carry it out.”  
  
“Does it involve a dress, because you’re the only one who looks good in drag.” Last year’s charity event still gave Lu Han nightmares from time to time. Some nights he jolted awake in a feverish sweat, clutching his chest, relieved to find nothing there.  
  
“Untrue, and irrelevant,” Kris said, his eye twitching. “Yixing?”  
  
Yixing appeared pensive. “I guess we could do more cold calling… but for some reason, more people hang up on me in the wintertime. This weather brings out the worst in everyone.”  
  
“It’s because of our nationwide vitamin D deficiency,” Lu Han explained. “It makes us all pissy.”  
  
“I’m not sure that’s factually based.”  
  
“Just google it,” Lu Han said, hoping Yixing wouldn’t.  
  
Kris, for some reason, had his head on the desk.  
  
“Oh good, you’re paying attention now.” Kris gingerly peeled himself from the durable lacquer finish of his $1400 desk. “No, cold-calling isn’t enough. I want you guys to take this book—“ he pulled out a Yellow Pages that looked yellow enough to be an artifact, “—and carry out as many door-to-door solicitations as you can manage for the next two weeks.”  
  
He smiled at their shell-shocked expressions, as if they’d just heard that Shanghainese pork dumplings had been outlawed.  
  
“Also,” Kris leaned back in his cushy alligator leather chair, “don’t forget to bring gloves. I hear it’s getting chilly out there.”  
  
  
***  
  
  
Back in the day Yixing wore the fluffiest down jackets, fluffier than anything Lu Han had ever hoped of owning. Maybe part of it was that Yixing himself had also been fluffier back in the day, when he didn’t mind people touching his face to dig for cheekbones. He retained the baby fat throughout college, until it could no longer be called baby fat (in the same way that Sehun was desperately holding on to his aegyo-sal), and then began to toil at the gym, staying until closing hours.  
  
That was where Lu Han saw him, from behind the receptionist desk. “Sign your name here,” pointing at the clipboard.  
  
“Oh, and check-in time,” he added as Yixing put down the pen and was about to head into the weight room.  
  
Yixing gave a flustered shake of his head and carefully printed out the time. “First timer?” Lu Han asked, watching him. “Want me to show you around?”  
  
“It’s alri--” Yixing stopped when he saw that Lu Han looked about as eager as a rookie cop handed with his first night stick. “Sure, I guess.”  
  
An hour later, Yixing crashed on a yoga mat, his body limp and lifeless and freshly painted with a glistening sheen of sweat. Parts of him that he didn’t know existed were sticky and wet. Like lovers in hypothermia, even his eyelashes clung to each other.  
  
“Oh god, that was insane.”  
  
Lu Han towered over him, panting a little himself even though Yixing had been doing most of the work. “Was I good?”  
  
Yixing moved his face in ways that hadn’t seemed possible. “You were amazing. How much are you getting paid for this?”  
  
Lu Han sat down crosslegged facing Yixing’s twiggy legs, kicked at his foot to make more room. Yixing folded into the fetal position.  
  
“I’m not doing this for the money, of course. I just like giving people a helping hand... You okay?”  
  
He poked at Yixing, whose eyes had rolled over.  
  
“Sorry, I just keep thinking about how you knew exactly what buttons to press--when I needed to push myself, go harder... that was exactly what I needed today... what I’ve needed for a while.”  
  
One thing Lu Han would learn in time was that Yixing made the transition from blissful-spacey to Taiwanese soap opera pretty seamlessly.  
  
“You looked like you were up for it,” Lu Han shrugged. He never knew how to handle compliments. “I was gonna go easy on you, but you kept demanding more.”  
  
“I’m like that,” Yixing said, all unintentionally throaty and hoarse and with a completely straight face.  
  
“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”  
  
Twenty pounds later, Yixing was carrying a stack of boxes that eclipsed his head. He jammed his shoulder into the doorbell and listened for the reverberating ring of terror and the slapping sound of wet feet against the floor, approaching closer and closer--  
  
Two arms, lifting the boxes from his stranglehold one at a time until he could see Lu Han’s bright, slightly red face over the last one, his hair wet and unruly. “Sorry for interrupting your shower.” Yixing set the last box on the floor and nudged the door close behind him.  
  
Lu Han wiped his face with the towel draped over his neck, winking out one last drop of water from his right eye. Yixing followed him into the common room, where Lu Han flopped down on the couch just big enough for two. He patted the space beside him.  
  
“This was all I could afford when I thought I was gonna be living in this place alone again.” Lu Han’s old roommate had been actually _old_ , a self-proclaimed veteran popstar who’d made it briefly in a Korean boyband and then moved back to China to nurse his wounded pride and receding hairline. Just last year he’d been lured back to Korea by his former band member and simultaneously faithful yet temperamentally mercurial ex, who stayed with them over winter break and clogged up the shower sink with his long hobo hair. His cat began incubating in Lu Han’s MCM knockoff. The whole thing felt like an overwhelming K-drama, if only it weren’t true. The evidence rested in the patterned stains on their old couch, which Lu Han sold to an unsuspecting freshman on the floor above. “Thanks, hyung!” Chanyeol was just happy he had a place to sleep again while sexiled by his roommate.  
  
“You bought a loveseat,” Yixing murmured.  
  
“It even rocks,” Lu Han said, pleased, and leaned back. Drops of water sprung off his hair and landed on Yixing’s face, his t-shirt, spotting little dark circles in the fabric.  
  
  
***  
  
  
This was Sehun’s least favorite part of the story. Sometimes he would try to go back, slowly scrolling down Lu Han’s Facebook timeline, putting the pieces together differently, out of order, but in the end they always fell into place the same way. The answer was clear, he’d realize in the darkness of his own dorm room (save for the illumination of the computer screen against his vampirically pale skin), underscored against the backdrop of Jongin’s rhythmic snores.  
  
  
***  
  
  
“Studies have shown that it’s much harder to reject people face-to-face than over the phone or via email.”  
  
Zitao stood over the table where Lu Han was eating lunch with Sehun. “I heard about your new project with Yixing.” He pulled out a chair and set down his lunch tray. Sehun hesitated in moving his bulgogi bowl over. “What a great opportunity.”  
  
Lu Han took a bite of his rice ball. “For what? Freezing our nuts off waiting to get doors slammed in our faces?”  
  
“Lu Han, the intern,” Zitao reminded him patiently. “No, I mean,” he lowered his voice, “I know Kris has his reasons for sending you on this mission.”  
  
“Mission...” Sehun echoed.  
  
“What reasons?” Lu Han asked.  
  
“All will be revealed in due time,” Zitao recited, stroking his imaginary beard. Then he dropped the act, deflating instantly. “Man, what I would do to be in your shoes.”  
  
Sehun looked puzzled.  
  
“Of course, my feet are bigger than yours.” Zitao gulped up the rest of his lunch and stood up.  
  
“They’re not,” Lu Han said to Sehun, because Zitao was already gone, evaporated like a gentle morning mist. “Are they?”  
  
“Can we eat out next time?” Sehun asked.  
  
  
***  
  
  
The first thing Lu Han noticed when he got to his door was that his shoes had been lined up in a row against the wall.  
  
Minseok was making his favorite Chinese dish, scrambled tomato and eggs. He had tied one of Lu Han’s long-sleeve pajama shirts around his waist as an apron.  
  
“Smells delicious,” Lu Han yelled over the kitchen exhaust fan. Minseok turned around. “Just a sec,” he mimed with the spatula.  
  
A couple hundred secs later, Lu Han was drooling over his rice bowl, chopsticks poised for attack.  
  
“You’re the best,” he said between gulps of juicy egg and tomato bits, the small seeds lodged between his molars. “Can you cook for me every day?”  
  
Minseok laughed good-naturedly. That was his way of saying, hell no.  
  
“Also, I did your laundry. I hope you don’t mind.”  
  
Minseok wasn’t actually a maid. He started out as a newspaper delivery boy that Lu Han kept seeing around the neighborhood, coasting along sidewalk edges on his scooter and hurling papers with pretty impressive accuracy. Next Lu Han began seeing him on his way to work, in a newsboy cap lugging around crates of bottled milk. They would smile cordially at each other, which, besides his distinctively korean features, was a dead giveaway that Minseok wasn’t from Around Here. No one was that nice at seven a.m.  
  
On one fateful day Lu Han had had the sudden, crippling urge to visit the park a few blocks from his apartment. He’d began working with Kris just two months ago and the sedentary desk job was already eating away at his posture, his nimbleness, the mark of his youth. Standing up from sitting for a long time was now a task in itself, as he had to wait for five minutes for the blood to return to his legs while it felt like a dozen munchkin fingers were furiously tickling the bottoms of his feet. This was unacceptable. He had to retrieve his health while it remained within reach.  
  
Minseok was in the park, kicking a ball with teenagers from the nearby high school while trying his best to not draw attention to the fact that he was probably too old to be hanging out with thirteen-year-olds. He still had those bountiful cheeks. And it was lonely being in China with no friends and a rudimentary understanding of the language. China was different from Japan, where they at least thought it was cool that you could say stuff like “Hi” and “My name is handsome.” In China no one pretended to be impressed by your badly accented Mandarin, because there were so many more people who looked more foreign and rocked the twenty-four vowel sounds. Maybe if he’d dyed his hair blond. But he didn’t think he’d make a good blond.  
  
At the height of this emotional near-breakdown, while Team Minseok was losing 3-0, Lu Han happened to be jogging by in his sweats and running headband, to keep his bangs away from his luscious forehead. “Hey, isn’t that--” and he coughed, because he was nowhere near the level of fitness required for moving and talking at the same time, but it was unmistakable--the Korean delivery guy was chasing a gaggle of bitesize boys around the soccer field.  
  
He grinded to a halt and stood slack-jawed behind the barbed wire for a few moments, pondering whether or not Minseok was a closet pervert and if so, whether he needed to contact the police so they could safely identify these children and herd them back to their loving families, far away from the clutches of dangerous chubby-faced strangers. But the thing was, stare and squint as he might, Minseok just didn’t ooze the aura of a pervert, or a kidnapper, or anything than a sad, lonely man in desperate need of some friendly group exercise. Take for example the way he was so clearly forfeiting this game to the children so as to foster in them a sense of masculine pride and purpose.  
  
Unless that was part of the grand scheme, right before he lured them into his mysterious black van.  
  
It didn’t matter. Whether it was the man or the children who needed saving, Lu Han could never resist a good damsel in distress.  
  
“Hey,” he cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Can I join?”  
  
“Oh, another grandpa,” said the bratty one with a greasy ponytail who would later be cast as an extra in Infernal Affairs 9.  
  
Minseok’s leg stopped over where he was prepared to kick the ball into his first and only goal of the night. It took some time for him to place Lu Han outside of his current walking Nike advertisement context, but then he remembered. Ah, the nice man who would sometimes smile back at him on his morning milk runs.  
  
Ponytail stole the ball from right under his foot. Team Minseok and Lu Han lost 4-0 but won the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  
  
Back at Lu Han’s place Minseok was eyeing the sneakers kicked haphazardly around the entryway. “You can borrow them if you want,” Lu Han said. “We’re probably about the same size.”  
  
Minseok looked embarrassed and confused at the same time, so he didn’t push it.  
  
“Should I take off my shoes?” Minseok asked politely.  
  
“Sure, just throw them wherever. Oh here, put on these slippers.” Lu Han dug an old pair of bunny slippers out of an old cereal box left by the door, slapped them against the wall a couple times to disperse the dust, and placed them by Minseok’s feet. They made strange crunchy sounds when Minseok stepped into them.  
  
“Sorry my place is a bit disheveled right now. It’s a work in progress.” Lu Han was lying; his entire life was a work in progress.  
  
“No, no.” Minseok quickly stopped grimacing. “It’s, um. Charming. Heh heh.”  
  
“Heh,” Lu Han echoed before sidestepping a bunch of unfolded laundry into the bathroom.  
  
When he emerged from his shower Minseok was sitting on the couch watching Happy Camp, hands pristine. Something seemed off, Lu Han thought, but couldn’t place it. Then he noticed the evidence: a neatly-folded pile of clothes on the opposite end of the sofa from where Minseok was.  
  
“Did you...”  
  
“No.” The response was immediate. Minseok had turned from the TV, his eyes ablaze with defensiveness.  
  
“I mean, it’s fine! More than fine. I’ve been meaning to fold it for ages now.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“You folded my laundry.”  
  
“No, I didn’t. Why would I do that?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
They stared at each other, as though baiting the other to back down, over the melodious affectations of He Jiong’s introductions.  
  
“Okay, fine,” Minseok cried out finally. “I did it. I’m sorry. They were just there, rumpled and sad, strewn all over your kitchen floor, _I had to_. I’m not a perv or anything, I swear. I really don’t care that you own sexy fishnet stockings. We all have hobb--”  
  
“Wait, those aren’t mine,” Lu Han interrupted, because they were a leftover from Kris’ cabaret days.  
  
“Of course not,” Minseok nodded uncertainly. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “...Are you mad?”  
  
“No,” Lu Han was trying not to laugh. “This is awesome. Feel free to come over all the time and fold my laundry whenever. Actually, I’ll pay you to be my maid.”  
  
This was the only part of the story Sehun ever remembered.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Lu Han had this one recurring dream, where he was running down a tunnel from an approaching train. He ran with his heart in his throat, knowing any minute now he’d feel the impact, for a split second only and then it would all be over. He was resigned to the inevitable outcome. He ran knowing he couldn’t outrun what was behind him.  
  
A bright flash of light flooded the darkness of the tunnel and, next thing he knew, the train had anthropomorphized into a willowy person and was now in front of him, shaking him with two menacing hands. Its fingers pulled his eyelids apart, allowing the blinding light to pierce his eyeballs like an ice pick. “Jesus, I’m awake, I’m awake,” he surrendered, jumping out of bed.  
  
When his vision cleared, it focused in on Yixing in a neon windbreaker and jeans. “Ready?” He asked, smiling.  
  
“What the--” Lu Han rubbed his eyes again and Yixing was still there, looking smug. He tried to creep back into bed because it was too cold to stand around in his underwear, but Yixing had already thrown a sweatshirt at his head. Lu Han’s arm shot up to catch it on instinct, even if he didn’t want to. “How did you get in?”  
  
“Kris lent me the keys to your apartment.” Yixing was examining his bedside table, sampling the dust that had collected on the surface. “Do you really need two alarm clocks?”  
  
“Yeah,” Lu Han said, his voice muffled through the material. Finally his head emerged through the neck of the sweatshirt, and he drew up the hood, pulling the drawstrings tight so that as little of his face was exposed to the subzero air as possible. “How do you get up every morning?”  
  
“I use my cell phone.” Yixing grabbed a pair of black skinnies off the headboard and threw them at him, too.  
  
“But you sleep like you’re dead to the world.” Lu Han zipped up and felt his back pockets for gum. He wondered if he could get away with not brushing his teeth.  
  
“I know, but I trained myself.”  
  
“Ah. I forgot.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“I forgot you were such an annoying perfectionist.”  
  
Yixing laughed, and couldn’t stop laughing. “Did you know you look like a pig right now? All I can see is your little pig snout.”  
  
  
***  
  
  
Yixing didn’t hook up in college; his most serious relationship ended just before the end of high school. He broke it off because “I didn’t want her to wait for me.” With anyone else Lu Han would have thought that was just an excuse for wanting to mess around in college, but this was Yixing. He was seriously Kelly Clarkson.  
  
“You treat girls like they’re pregnant,” Lu Han mused. “Like there’s all this responsibility you have to bear just for getting involved with them or something.”  
  
Yixing reached his hand into a bag of chips and kept it there, suddenly lost in thought. “I just try to treat them with respect.” Lu Han tried to detect a hint of defensiveness in the tone but there wasn’t any.  
  
Lu Han hooked up with girls at parties. Not all the time, but sometimes. Some mornings he would find long strands of hair on his pillow that weren’t his. He was discreet about it, quiet enough that Yixing never brought it up, not that he would’ve anyway.  
  
“I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Sex and respect, I mean. Sometimes girls want the same, you know, no strings attached deal, too.”  
  
Lu Han could sense how far away Yixing was from the conversation, how closed off. He could sense the how but not the why. Yixing blinked slowly, once, twice, before answering.  
  
“I just want to be sure before I do anything.”  
  
“Of your feelings?”  
  
“Of both our feelings--me and the girl, I mean.”  
  
But feelings could take a lifetime to decipher, Lu Han thought. And there were so many variables involved. You could sleep with someone and it’d be like just scratching an itch, like a deep, contented sigh. No further demands. Or you could love someone but not want to sleep with them. Or you could love someone and not know.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Of the fifty people whose doors they knocked on, seven took one glance at Lu Han through the peephole and insisted that they weren’t interested in buying any more cookies. “You’re cockblocking this operation.” Yixing lowered himself onto the park bench and cringed upon the cold contact. Lu Han shifted his weight from side to side, rubbing up static between his gloved palms, and had an idea. “Get up, quick.”  
  
“I’m tired,” Yixing groaned but dragged himself to his feet anyway. When they stood face to face, Lu Han grinned and stuck his right hand in Yixing’s left pocket, then his left in the other, squeezing them against Yixing’s own.  
  
“Remember I used to--”  
  
Yixing didn’t say anything, but he squeezed back, like two sticks trying to make a fire.  
  
They decided to call it a day after four hours of not being able to feel their toes. Yixing, as always, expressed interest in a movie and a nap. Lu Han watched him peruse the New Releases section with a disconcerting sense of deja vu, that they were recycling their own movements from a lifetime ago--the way Yixing skimmed his fingers across the cover in consideration, lifted his chin to ask, “How about this one?”  
  
  
  
  
  
“I hate peeing when my hands are cold.  
  
“I hate cold pizza.  
  
“I hate cold fries.  
  
“I hate when... like, I wake up right before my alarm sounds, and I go back to sleep, and then it goes off two minutes later.  
  
“I hate when people get mad at me for talking through a bad movie.”  
  
“Shh, I’m watching this,” Yixing said.  
  
Lu Han threw a cushion at his face. But Yixing had already zoned out of the conversation and back into the movie. The whining game was no fun played alone.  
  
It was so bad, though. People kept dying for no reason, and the deaths weren’t even done with a semblance of taste, just frantic smearings of red. They probably could have carried out reenactments with hot sauce. That was an idea, Lu Han thought, resting his chin on Yixing’s shoulder, recalling what had once been his favorite way to fall asleep.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Zitao decided the office would throw Kris a birthday party. “It’s a surprise; he’ll love it.” He was already illustrating on MS Paint floor plans for decorations. The theme seemed to be circles and squares.  
  
“Please don’t throw me a birthday party,” Kris pleaded with Lu Han in his office. “I’m so bad at pretending to be surprised.”  
  
“Why don’t you try it out?” Lu Han suggested. “I’ll let you know how convincing you are.”  
  
“I’m doing it right now.”  
  
“Oh. Well, on the bright side, I think Zitao will appreciate the effort no matter what. Are you good at fake-crying?”  
  
Kris did it again.  
  
“Why are you telling me this again? Why don’t you get Yixing to bring him the bad news or something?”  
  
Kris put away his Halloween mask. “Yixing? He called in sick today.”  
  
Outside Kris’ office, Jongdae was already sending out email invites to all his Chinese friends. _BIRTHDAY BASH OF THE YEAR!!!!_ Most of them he picked up off the street by handing out his name card and asking if they wanted to try professional modeling. He couldn’t wait for his coworkers to meet his new friends.  
  
  
***  
  
  
After the two-year relationship Lu Han and Yixing stopped talking. It wasn’t that they stopped so much as they allowed things to start coming in between them. Lu Han switched out of the econ major to math and the department was scattered on the other side of the river, the far end of campus, forcing him to move. Lu Han had most of the credits and at the time hadn’t known if he was choosing the lesser of two evils. In reality he was drifting, losing interest in the tedium of classrooms and textbooks. He started hanging out with a different crowd, a bunch of international Korean students in his new dorm. He began to lose track of Yixing in the crowd, his slouch.  
  
Yixing graduated with honors and an extra stripe in his sash. His family clogged up the aisle when he walked across the stage and took photos and cried when his name was announced. Yixing’s mom caught sight of Lu Han at one point and smiled at him, waved, gestured that she wanted a photo. She lined up the boys together, just these two she insisted, before getting a group shot with the rest of Yixing’s buddies, and Lu Han’s hand awkwardly gripping Yixing’s shoulder, their heads balancing the graduation caps precariously, was the only shot they’d have of them together until Kris’ birthday party two years later.  
  
“Freshman year,” she said with the same tender firmness he’d grown accustomed to on her campus visits, “You were the only thing our Yixing could talk about. Lulu this Lulu that. We thought he’d found a girlfriend.”  
  
And then she was pulled away, because Yixing’s grandmother wanted a family photo by the rainstreaked statue outside the university library. Yixing nodded vaguely at Lu Han and Lu Han raised up a hand to wave, goodbye or something, he wasn’t sure, although it had felt final at the time.  
  
  
  
  
  
He spent a year unemployed after graduation, having bypassed the entire frenzy of the senior year job application process. He worked part-time at an amusement park as an admissions attendant, darkening four shades and slimming down beyond recognition over the course of two months. He crashed at his ex-roommate’s, the old one, empty apartment while he was in Korea. “‘Course, man. Anytime. Just pay the utilities,” Han Geng reassured over the phone again and again. Lu Han wondered if he was finding himself or finding that he couldn’t. Still he didn’t call home. A former dormmate introduced him to a translating gig, and it paid well enough for him to start wiring more money to Korea. He liked having to think on the job, to use a skill he’d earned. The boss, though, was a sketchy Korean dude who sometimes put his hand on Lu Han’s thigh and kept it there for moments longer than could be justified. But Lu Han didn’t want to mess this up. One night the boss insisted on taking all the translators to a cabaret club downtown, and that was where it all changed.  
  
He found one of the dancers in the bathroom, smoking a well-burnt cigarette. “Long day?” Lu Han asked, running his hands under the faucet.  
  
The dancer shrugged, digging his stiletto into the tile behind him. The entire ensemble looked cartoonish on him, the leotard straps pulled tight across the breadth of his shoulders, the bellflower curve of the tutu barely hiding the musculature in his legs. But the glitter staining his bottom eyelids brought out the intensity of his gaze and highlighted the sharpness of his bone structure. Men and women alike could find promises in those eyes.  
  
“You?” Kris returned the question, crushing the cigarette under his heel.  
  
“My boss keeps feeling me up.”  
  
Kris opened his arms. “Welcome to real life.”  
  
He liked Kris for how readable he was despite his attempts at crypticism, which he carried like a protective skin. He was stubborn but agreeable, easy to talk to, and for the most part unsentimental. In normal clothes he still drew stares walking down the street with Lu Han, his head held high out of habit. He knew what he could get away with, as all beautiful people did, but chose to take the dirty beaten path. It didn’t matter what costumes life adorned him with. Lu Han liked that about him, because between what was easy and what was right he suspected he himself would always pick the former.  
  
  
  
  
  
At Lu Han’s favorite teahouse several months later Kris would break the good news. Lu Han blew steam off his hot mug of pu-erh cha and waited for the announcement. He hadn’t expected to hear a familiar voice ring through the quiet cafe, “The trains were running late,” its owner dipping his head before Lu Han could confirm the side profile, the bridge of his nose and upturn to his mouth. His chin stayed buried in a thick cable-knitted scarf through the profuse apologies, which Kris interrupted with a laughing, “Hey, let me introduce you.”  
  
The click of recognition was delayed; Lu Han felt rather than heard it, stretched unbearably wide and thin. Yixing’s eyes widened and momentarily registered the instinct to run, before he relaxed into a more vacuous, friendly expression and held out his hand.  
  
One of his regulars, Kris told them, was forfeiting his company to pursue his a longtime passion, film-making. He’d always seen potential in Kris, a sort of business acumen that most ordinary people lacked. A sort of common sense. He wanted Kris to inherit the company, he said. He wanted it to go to someone good.  
  
Of course, in a way, we’d be working from scratch.  
  
We? Lu Han asked.  
  
If you’re willing, Kris started.  
  
I am. The certainty in Yixing’s voice startled everyone, and Lu Han didn’t have to probe deep to find his own answer.  
  
  
***  
  
  
“I bear gifts,” Lu Han yelled into the intercom upon the crackle of static. He hopped from foot to foot, hoping that the map Sehun had sketched out on his palm had led him to the right place. “Let me in?” he added, just in case.  
  
The Yixing that greeted him at the door was red-nosed and wearing a comforter as a shawl. “C’mon in,” he droned, and sneezed, narrowly missing Lu Han’s shoulder.  
  
Lu Han brought pork floss and congee and on the way to Yixing’s place had picked up a carton of century eggs and a couple boxes of different-flavored Pocky. Yixing nosed around the food items, too weak to be suspicious. He picked up some of the rousong with his fingers and tasted it on the tip of his tongue, curiously. Lu Han broke apart a pair of disposable chopsticks. “What are you, a dog? Not even a Chinese dog. A freaking golden retriever or something.”  
  
Yixing couldn’t laugh without coughing asthmatically. “I haven’t had this in a long time.”  
  
“It’s sick people food,” Lu Han agreed. “‘Aaahhh.’”  
  
Obediently, Yixing allowed himself to be fed.  
  
He still got sick twice a year, Lu Han found out, and usually wasted half of his vacation days like this, bundled up in front of the radiator with a bowl of soup, channel-surfing through daytime talk shows. Times like this he would start to pray, he said, especially when he could no longer breathe through his nose. Dear God, he’d say, wheezing the words out his parched throat, please help me develop a stronger immune system so I can go to work again. I’ll turn a blind eye whenever I see Zitao checking out Kris’ ass. I will stop eating crap when no one’s around. I’ll--I’ll be a better friend.  
  
“Hey now. You’ve always been a good friend,” Lu Han interrupted and, after a beat, “the best.”  
  
Yixing finished the entire bowl and fell asleep with his feet on Lu Han’s lap. Lu Han leaned over to rub off a small thread of drool from the corner of his mouth and tucked his cold toes under the blankets.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Yixing was dating seriously, Kris had revealed later at the teahouse, with someone one of his college friends had introduced, a cabin attendant. He always liked the flighty ones, Kris mused, dipping his cigarette. Lu Han watched the tiny embers tumble into the ashtray. What's she like?  
  
Self-possessed. Cheerful. Nice legs.  
  
Oh, Lu Han mouthed, and realized he'd never known what Yixing's type was. He'd gone on blind setups but for the most part holed up in the library studying during the weekdays and let loose with Lu Han and some other guys on the weekends. The girls he did see from time to time all earned a noncommital "they were nice" from him when Lu Han eagerly drilled him for details. As far as he knew, Yixing's romantic history was a tragic dearth of data points. But clearly Kris knew more.  
  
It was unsettling, meeting someone who was best friends with your former best friend and who was best friends with them earlier and longer. Listening to Kris casually leak information about how Yixing was doing felt like eavesdropping on a private conversation, or typing the name of a close friend into the Baidu search bar. You found out stuff you weren't supposed to know. Because if you were, wouldn't you know by now?  
  
I need to quit, Kris confided over his last smoke. I need to get my shit together.  
  
  
***  
  
  
“Surprise!” everyone yelled, jumping out from behind Jongdae’s various feng-shui’d antique furniture pieces.  
  
“Happy birthday, boss,” Zitao stammered, holding out the first present of the evening, packaged in handmade papier-mache. His eyes were already welling up with tears like a lifesize crying Ponyo.  
  
“Wow!” Kris shouted, drawing a blubbering Zitao into an awkward bro-hug. “I am really surprised! Thanks, man. And, uh, everyone.” He let go to gesture towards the masses, including Jongdae’s new friends, all of whom were sporting bikinis and freshly waxed gams.  
  
“Are they of age?” Sehun whispered to Lu Han.  
  
“Are you?” Jongdae, who had overheard, whispered back. Sehun jumped, because he hadn’t seen Jongdae standing there. No one had.  
  
“Having a good time?” Jongdae winked and left without waiting for a reply.  
  
Yixing looked like he was, immersed in a deep conversation with one of the girls by the punch bowl. He was nodding a lot, and she kept touching his arm and leaning in to laugh at jokes he probably wasn’t even making, because Yixing was horrible at making jokes. The only ones that were funny were ones he never meant to make in the first place. She must’ve been a great actress.  
  
“Whoa. You sound a little upset.” Sehun looked concerned.  
  
Lu Han hadn’t realized he’d been talking aloud. Maybe it was time for more punch, he decided.  
  
  
  
  
  
Two hours later, Lu Han was sobering up while sitting cross-legged in Jongdae’s second-floor closet.  
  
He wasn’t sure how he got there, but he remembered trying to escape the vision of Yixing and that Ye Zi Xuan girl--who apparently, according to Jongdae, was a bit of a celebrity in these parts of town--pressing up against each other in random parts of the house, and he took one wrong turn and somehow ended up in the walk-in closet where Jongdae kept all his expensive winterwear. Once he sat down he knew he wouldn’t want to get up, so he made a bunch of drunken posts on Weibo and uploaded photos of his feet glowing in the cameraphone flash against a dark and eerie backdrop of fur coats.  
  
He might have dozed off after some time, he couldn’t tell how long, but then a light came on, and off again, and he felt someone squeeze in beside him, nudging him awake.  
  
“Why do I always find you asleep,” Yixing’s voice said.  
  
Lu Han kept his eyes closed, because not being able to see meant he was still asleep and no one could bother him if he was asleep. But Yixing wasn’t having it, he kept pushing against him and rocking him back and forth, trying to make him pay attention, and that was when Lu Han noticed how much drunker Yixing smelled, and how, if Lu Han actually did pay attention, he vaguely carried the scent of a girl, sweet and flowery.  
  
“Why do you always find me,” Lu Han agreed with a sleepy sigh, but he was awake now, his olfactory senses alerted. And for some reason Yixing looked sad, even in the dark, he could just tell by how sad he suddenly felt himself, for no real good reason. They were sitting so, so close, and Lu Han felt how they were on the cusp, the edge of reconstructing this, what they had had before, once upon many times ago, but something was standing in the way like it always had been, they just never talked about it. Everything was magnified right now, deafeningly crisp like they had no choice now but to stare down the sun, and speak.  
  
Lu Han looked at the face he could barely make out in the dark yet knew too well by heart. He hated how well he knew it--as well as every one of his childhood scars long after they’d faded into wrinkles.  
  
He said this aloud, activating the whining game, easing the silence.  
  
“I hate that we stopped talking,” Yixing said, low as a whisper. “I mean actually talking, for almost two years, and I still don’t know why. I mean. I do, I guess. But I still hate it.”  
  
Lu Han took Yixing’s hand without thinking. “It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“I hate how--” Yixing continued, looking away from him, “--I can’t put my feelings into words, there’s this disconnect, like I can’t string it all together. I hated feeling like a bad friend back when we were in school, whenever you went out and I was happy for you but more than anything... more than anything, Lu Han, I wanted--I wanted--”  
  
He turned, looking up slowly, away, and then back, measuring his courage in cups. Lu Han wanted to still his eyes so that they rested on him, stayed and saw. He set his hands on Yixing’s shoulders, then reached up to keep his face in place. Yixing was focusing on the square of skin between his eyebrows, that trick he once told Lu Han about that he used when he was nervous with people. It takes the pressure off, he’d explained. Like I’m looking at your unibrow right now. Fuck off, Lu Han said, only slightly worried he was telling the truth. He should’ve asked, What pressure?  
  
“Tell me what you wanted.”  
  
Because even if he thought he knew, how could he be sure, how could any of them ever know if no one said anything, if they pretended to be okay with the status quo, the gray area, this side of the blurry line? It was scary on the other side, but wasn’t it scarier to wonder forever? To be suspended--to regret--to be resigned--to tell yourself no without knowing, for real, for sure. Lu Han stepped forward. Be brave, Zhang Yixing, he tried to communicate.  
  
Lu Han watched Yixing flicker in and out of focus, deliberating, and then suddenly nod, as though equipped with an understanding, with new resolve. He slowly peeled Lu Han’s fingers off his face and laced them through his own. With an aching hesitance he looked directly at Lu Han and mouthed, _This._  
  
  
***  
  
  
“Sales are up,” Kris announced in his office. “We have close to fifty new clients this month alone.” He cleared his throat before adding, “Good job, you guys.”  
  
“That’s it?” Lu Han said. “My toes almost fell off from frostbite. It’s as painful as it sounds.”  
  
“You are so dramatic,” Kris said, checking his Outlook for new messages.  
  
“It was really cold, though,” Yixing said at the same time that Lu Han asked, “Uh, have you met Huang Zitao?”  
  
“I want a promotion,” Lu Han continued. “C’mon, what would you do without us?”  
  
“Lead a much more peaceful life,” Kris said, moving OKCupid notifications into his Junk folder. For some reason the only girls who ever contacted him all claimed to be experienced martial arts practitioners.  
  
“We’re very peaceful. Look at Yixing. What a peaceful face.”  
  
In response Yixing tried his best to look his usual self.  
  
Kris wondered if they really thought he couldn’t see them holding hands under the desk.


End file.
